March 11th 2020

By James Rogers Bush

We have come a long way since that fateful morning on Lexington Common, April 19, 1775. It has been a long haul, pulling ourselves through time and space to build and maintain a country that keeps growing in ‘liberty and justice for all.’ It has not always been pretty, or kind, or righteous, or good for everyone. We have not always followed the right path, or ethical path, or path that everyone could follow. Lady Liberty’s torch of freedom has sometimes been dimmed and nearly extinguished by selfishness, greed, and cruelty. More often than not, mendacity, avarice, and hubris were our primary motivators and not the twin principles of truth and justice.

But somehow we have kept going. Somehow, despite all of the corruption of our values from within and all of the threats to our land from without, we have maintained a system of laws that enable us to rectify the mistakes we make, both with each other and the rest of the world. And no matter how far down we go or how high up we fly, we still find ourselves back on level ground and moving forward towards that ever-receding but always visible goal of ‘a more perfect union.’

This is no mirage that we continue to head towards. This is not a fool’s dream that leads us on to some dark dead end, where we and our country fall down a deep hole and onto the garbage heap of history. Oh, there are those among us who think that our sins are too great or that our dreams are too naive. Their cynicism darkens our path and attempts to lead us onto some plain of despair, where we abandon our founders’ dream, throw away our constitutional map, and wander off in some random direction of disillusionment or self-absorption. They think that some alternative route is the answer to our sins or the fulfillment of our dreams. They think that time and lies have worn out and broken the moral compass that the founders left us.

Ben Franklin’s words ring in my ears now, “You have a Republic, if you can keep it!”

And Washington’s refusal to allow himself to be made a king, swells in my memory.

The echoes of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth!” surround me.

And Franklin Roosevelt’s reminder that, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” straightens and strengthens me.

We must not forget what men like these fought for, sacrificed for, and strove to leave us. They did not prattle on with idle chatter, to sell us some cheap ideas and easy solutions to a frustrated and angry crowd of disillusioned and disappointed miscreants. They were appealing to the ‘better angels of our nature.’ They were speaking to our inner character; that deeper nature that contains our conscience; the conscience that tames the savage and selfish beast and allows compassion to temper and moderate our behavior and actions towards our fellow human beings.

What the Founders also left us were warnings not to let ourselves fall into the trap of allowing a would-be autocrat to seduce us into believing that he has the answers to all our problems, and that all we have to do is to let him upend our values and traditions, break all the rules of decency, and run things his own way, free of the encumbrances of government and the wisdom of the ages that has been passed down to us.

We fought a revolution to free ourselves from a monarchy, we do not now need to return to a time when one man dictates to the rest of us what will be, separate from the constitutional laws that guide us. We do not need a wealthy - morally and ethically bankrupt - tycoon, and his coterie of retrograde sycophants, to take over the reins of our democratic republic and turn it into a country run by thieves and cutthroats who have very little appreciation or concern for our system of governance or the people that it is charged to oversee for the common good of all.

So, we are now standing at a crossroads, and the direction we take will determine the future of our country, our system of governance, and the lives of our descendants. The direction we take will determine if our country will continue to grow towards being an even more perfect union or if it will devolve into an American Dream that was never fulfilled. It is now, as it has always been and always will be, entirely up to us.